Philip Plowden - National Teaching Fellow

In this article from the Autumn 2005 issue of Directions Philip Plowden, Associate Dean/Director of Professional Courses in the School of Law at Northumbria University, talks about plans for his National Teaching Fellowship. For more information contact Philip on philip.plowden@unn.ac.uk.

I was delighted – and extremely surprised – to be awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in June this year. The Fellowships are individual awards, but as all readers of Directions will know, university teaching is inevitably a collaborative process – how can we achieve anything without the support of our colleagues, without the commitment of our students, and without some degree of institutional support from our universities? If the process of applying for a Fellowship is therefore slightly odd – with its focus on individual achievement – the rewards are substantial, with a research award of £50,000 to be spent on a teaching-related project.

Philip (centre) receives his award from Bill Rammell (left; Minister for Higher Education) and Professor Sir David Watson (right; Chair of the NTFS Advisory Panel)

The clinical assessment project

My project will be looking at the ways in which we assess the clinical learning components which are now becoming increasingly common across our courses. My particular focus will be on how we can assess live client work, with all its unpredictability, in a way which is transparent, fair and rigorous. If one student is dealing with a massive criminal appeal case, which may run for several years more before it is resolved, and another student is dealing with three or four employment cases, all of which require representation at the tribunal, how can we fairly compare these very different types of work and the very different demands which they place on the students?

Obviously these questions are not unique to the clinical work which is happening in England and Wales. In jurisdictions from the USA to Australia, from South Africa to Latin America, the issue of how one can assess live client work fairly is one that universities have to address. These are issues that are often raised at the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education conferences, which take place every summer (this year’s was in Melbourne, next year’s is likely to be in Dublin or Cork). They are also issues that have had to be addressed in other subject areas – in particular the health sciences, where clinical teaching had its origins.

My plans therefore are to work with my clinical colleagues to put together a review of the different assessment strategies, both within the clinical teaching of law in a number of jurisdictions and outside law by looking at other contexts that use clinical teaching methods. My hope is that by addressing the issue of how best we can assess, the research project can help those who want to develop clinical programmes in their law teaching by providing them with a resource to use when planning the assessment process.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010